So why the pain for emerging markets when other “risk” assets barely outstripped U.S. stocks? It looks like a continuation of the 2013 trend. That means currency weakness and interest-rate worry, with fears of an economic slowdown in the background, seen this time in a weak reading on China’s service sector.

Michael Shaoul of Marketfield Asset Management wrote clients Thursday morning to argue that the weak trends in key emerging-markets currencies looked very much intact:

Well established trends generally survive the turning of the calendar to a new year as can be seen with the continued sell off in emerging market carry currencies this morning. The ZAR (dark green) fell to a new 5 year low of 10.65 taking its three year loss up to 60.7%. Although the TRY (red) has done a little better over this period of time it is currently at the locus of market concerns and fell to a new all time low of 2.187 this morning and must be considered vulnerable to further loss going forwards. The BRL (blue) is once more flirting with the key 2.40 level, which can be expected to provoke yet another aggressive intervention by the central bank. However, the cost of these interventions is starting to mount and although Brazil retains ample reserves at some point the scale of loss may prompt a policy rethink.

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Chris Dieterich has covered the U.S. stock market for The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. He is a graduate of Regis University and the Missouri School of Journalism.